


a midsummer's night dream

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (or: brienne is supposed to be one), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brienne of Tarth is the Best, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jaime Lannister Needs a Hug, Pagan Gods, Post-World War I, Tumblr Prompt, idek, probably this fic owes something thematically to lady chatterley's lover, sorry not in like actual content inspiration, very loosely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23963872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: You are a supernatural being who showed up injured on my door and I have no idea what medical care for a forest god is supposed to be like but please don’t die on me.Or: in which Brienne is the forest god in question.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 24
Kudos: 188





	a midsummer's night dream

**Author's Note:**

> Aaand always for the tumblr list meme, this was always for emilysnora and the prompt was the one in the summary and I honestly don't know what the hell this fic even is I just know I gave up on researching celtic water pagan gods after fifteen minutes because it wasn't going to work and I made the entire thing up from scratch, but please feel free to imagine brienne's aesthetic like gwen's in her theater play last year from which I stole the title ;) ;) ;) other than that I own zilch and I'll go back to repost the rest. xD

When Jaime hears something hitting his door rather violently, he’s _this_ tempted to not open it.

First of all, because moving in a small cottage at the edge of the damned forest was a choice he made _exactly_ because he wanted to send a message to most of his family that he didn’t want contact with people, least of all _them_ \- Tyrion knows where he is, no one else does, he’s fine like this.

Second of all, because there are reasons he doesn’t want contact with _anyone_ \- he had enough of it during the war and every time there’s dirt under his nails he feels like it’s blood that he hasn’t managed to wash off his left hand since the fucking Somme - the right, well. The right is the reason he was shipped home _after_ then, and the reason why he doesn’t want to be around his goddamned family right now, not when everyone _insisted_ that he should enlist for their good name and now can’t look at him anymore, and there’s a limit to how many times he can hear that maybe it’d have been better off if he died honorably than coming back a cripple.

So he ignores it for a grand total of five minutes as he sips his bourbon, and then there’s another, fainter knock on the door, and shit, he was assured that kids don’t come this far because everyone in the nearby village thinks the forest is haunted, so it’s probably not children wanting to fuck with him, and what if it’s really someone who needs help?

He shakes his head, takes a deep breath and goes to open the door.

“I don’t have time for jokes, just -” He starts, and then it dies in his throat because there is no kid dumped on the three steps leading up to the door.

It’s a _woman_ , he realizes, and not one he knows or has ever met - she’s _tall_ , and he can see that from how long her legs are since she’s not wearing _anything_ except what looks like leaves circling her back and her chest, with broad shoulders, broader than his, long, pale blonde hair that looks like starlight with the moon shining directly over it and wait, is there _moss_ woven into it -

Heck, there are _purple flowers_ woven into her hair, and then she raises her eyes to his, and -

Oh.

She has a rather plain face, maybe, with a large crooked nose, full dark lips and freckles splattered all over it, but her _eyes_ are gorgeous - a clear, glowing pure sky-blue with long, pretty lashes, and he’d just stare down at them if she wasn’t spitting blood from her mouth.

He’s about to ask her name, but then he _hears_ a feminine voice in his head, saying _help me_ , and he’s not even sure it was spoken in English _but_ he understood it anyway, and -

The way her eyes are glowing, he doesn’t think she’s… a _regular_ person.

Never mind _that_ \- she’s spitting blood on his stairs and he’s not _that_ much of an asshole.

“All right,” he says, “all right, uh, fuck, you’re naked - fuck that.” She’s not _all right_ , they can worry about property later.

He helps her stand, then leads her into the cottage, sitting her down on his bed, and then she coughs in between her hands and it’s _more blood_ and she looks terrified as she sees it, and some of the flowers in her hair die at once.

What the -

“Hey,” he says, putting a hand on her arm, tentatively, “I - I don’t know what you are or your name but - I _want_ to help you, just tell me how. If you can talk. Or do that… thing you did before?” Shit, he sounds ridiculous, what the fuck does it even mean -

_I belong in the forest_ , he hears in his head again, and he’s sure she hasn’t spoken out loud but it’s her telling him that, _I never left it. But today I drank in the river and this happened_.

The river -

Oh, _fuck_ , he realizes, the river that goes into that one forest is running next to a new war munitions factory that was opened in the nearby town maybe a week ago, which means that whatever debris comes out of it ends up in there, and if she drank from it -

More dead flowers fall on his bed as she spits more blood.

Fucking hell, he thinks he has some kind of… of _forest nymph_ on his bed and he has no idea of what he can do to heal her, because if it’s fucking _pollution_ doing this to her then it only makes sense but it’s not as if he knows what he can do about it now, does he -

Wait. Didn’t he hear something about whoever owned that factory having bought part of the area where her forest is because he wants to build _more_?

He has a feeling she’s in for a very, very rough future, _if_ he figures out how to do anything about… this. Maybe she needs to get the toxins out. Maybe _that’s_ because she’s spitting blood. He shakes his head, goes to grab a bucket, then goes to find some of _his_ water, which is… well. Clean. He doesn’t take that from that river, rather a well nearby that as far as he knows isn’t polluted.

“Uhm,” he says, “just - spit the blood in there. Then try to drink this, maybe it’ll help? I’m sorry, I -”

She nods, spits more blood, then drinks the water, her eyes going a bit wider, and then she _throws up even more blood_ , but then she looks back at him with those blowing eyes and he hears _I need more_ and so he goes to get her more until she’s done throwing up, his bucket is stained in magical goddess blood, _probably_ , and all of the flowers in her hair are wilting and the leaves making a poor job of covering her _also_ wilt.

But she’s breathing and she doesn’t seem like she’ll die anymore.

“Uh,” he asks, finding a blanket to put on her shoulders - doing it one-handed is a _problem_ , but he manages -, “did - did it work?”

_Yes_ , he hears again as she looks at him gratefully, _but I’m weak_. _Thank you for helping me_ , she says, sounding like she means it, and suddenly he feels _tired_ as he drops sitting down next to her on the bed while she holds the blanket around her shoulders - good, because the sight of her small, naked breasts was starting to become distracting.

“You’re welcome,” he whispers, “first good thing I’ve done since the war.”

Her eyes fall to the ruined stump of his left hand, the one that still _hurts_ regardless of how many oils and ointments he tries to put on it as balm, without much success.

_Oh_ , she whispers, still _in his damned head_ and without opening her mouth, _could you use help with that_?

He shrugs, figuring that it’s obvious. “Well, yeah,” he says, “but - you don’t look too well. Focus on yourself first. Really. It’s been a year, I can cope. Uh, and how do I call you?”

He supposes he’ll need a name if she’s going to stay a while… which seems likely, at this point.

_It’s… I need to think about it for a moment. About how it could sound in your tongue_ , she says, and he nods. _What’s yours_?

“Jaime,” he says, his voice dropping. “My - my name is Jaime. I can wait for yours.”

_Jaime_ , she whispers, gently, as if she’s trying to say it, and even if she’s not speaking he _likes_ how she says it, and then she stands and goes to get some more water. He doesn’t stop her. She drinks a glass, then another, then _another_ , and then she’s drank his entire reserve, but it’s fine, the well is nearby. The more she does, the more those violet flowers blossom in her hair, and _fuck_ he can’t take his eyes off that, and then she stands back up and when she looks at him again her skin is almost glowing as much as her eyes and there’s almost a crown of flowers on the back of her head, and fuck but she’s magnificent, not just in the pale moonlight crawling from the window.

She doesn’t drop the blanket when she moves back to the bed, but rather than sitting next to him she takes his right wrist in her hands - shit, no one else that wasn’t his latest doctor has touched it in _months_ and usually he flinches at the idea, but her hands are warm and _light_ even if she has long, slightly rough fingers, and he doesn’t mind it.

She glances down at the reddened skin - it healed badly, he _knows_ it did, but wearing that fake golden prosthesis his father forced on him back home didn’t help - and then she wraps his wrist into both her palms and he feels _warm_ , so very warm, but not in an uncomfortable way, and then it’s gone as soon as it arrived and she’s moving her hands away -

And not only he realizes that it doesn’t _hurt_ anymore, but when he looks down at it, his skin has… scarred properly. It’s not red anymore, rather white or pale pink, and it feels like it happened twenty years ago, not _one_.

“Oh,” he says, turning his wrist over, realizing it really _doesn’t hurt anymore_ , “thank you.” He knows it’s barely audible, but then her hand touches his face and he’s looking into her glowing blue eyes again.

_It was only fair,_ she says.

And then -

_My name is Brienne_ , she says. _Or it is… for you, I suppose_.

Brienne.

It’s a nice name, he thinks.

He likes it.

“You know,” he says, his voice maybe a bit shaky, “that river - the waters will keep on hurting you. And - they want to tear down part of the forest. Not on this side, though. If you want to drink from the well… you’re welcome to.”

She considers it, then nods once, slowly, and looks out of the window.

“Do you have to go?” He asks, haring how _pathetic_ it sounded, because now that she’s here he wishes she’d stay -

_For now,_ she says, _I - I need to warn the others so they won’t do the same. But I think I will accept your offer_ , she says, and then a large hand is on his face and her lips have pressed against his, softly but _surely_ , and he shudders when he parts his own and realizes that she doesn’t - she doesn’t tastes like _anything_ he knows, but when she moves back he feels like he has just breathed the purest, cleanest air of his life.

Then she reaches up, tugs a few purple blooms from her hair and presses them into his left hand.

_I will be back_ , she says, and then she’s standing and she’s out of his door and disappeared into the forest.

If it wasn’t for the flowers in his hand, he’d think he made her up.

But -

They’re _there_ , in full bloom, and he can feel his lips turning upwards as he thinks, _I hope she comes back soon_.

End.


End file.
